The Current State of Business Intelligence in Academia: The Arrival of Big Data

In December 2012, the AIS Special Interest Group on Decision Support, Knowledge and Data Management Systems (SIGDSS) and the Teradata University Network (TUN) cosponsored the Business Intelligence Congress 3 and conducted surveys to assess academia’s response to the growing market need for students with Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Analytics (BA) skill sets. This panel report describes the key findings and best practices that were identified, with an emphasis on what has changed since the BI Congress efforts in 2009 and 2010. The article also serves as a “call to action” for universities regarding the need to respond to emerging market needs in BI/BA, including “Big Data.” The IS field continues to be well positioned to be the leader in creating the next generation BI/BA workforce. To do so, we believe that IS leaders need to continuously refine BI/BA curriculum to keep pace with the turbulent BI/BA marketplace

The ROTSE-III Robotic Telescope System

The observation of a prompt optical flash from GRB990123 convincingly demonstrated the value of autonomous robotic telescope systems. Pursuing a program of rapid follow-up observations of gamma-ray bursts, the Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE) has developed a next-generation instrument, ROTSE-III, that will continue the search for fast optical transients. The entire system was designed as an economical robotic facility to be installed at remote sites throughout the world. There are seven major system components: optics, optical tube assembly, CCD camera, telescope mount, enclosure, environmental sensing & protection and data acquisition. Each is described in turn in the hope that the techniques developed here will be useful in similar contexts elsewhere.Comment: 19 pages, including 4 figures. To be published in PASP in January, 2003. PASP Number IP02-11

The Dark Side of ROTSE-III Prompt GRB Observations

We present several cases of optical observations during gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) which resulted in prompt limits but no detection of optical emission. These limits constrain the prompt optical flux densities and the optical brightness relative to the gamma-ray emission. The derived constraints fall within the range of properties observed in GRBs with prompt optical detections, though at the faint end of optical/gamma flux ratios. The presently accessible prompt optical limits do not require a different set of intrinsic or environmental GRB properties, relative to the events with prompt optical detections.Comment: ApJ accepted. 20 pages in draft manuscript form, which includes 6 pages of tables and 2 figure

The ROTSE-IIIa Telescope System

We report on the current operating status of the ROTSE-IIIa telescope, currently undergoing testing at Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico. It will be shipped to Siding Spring Observatory, Australia, in first quarter 2002. ROTSE-IIIa has been in automated observing mode since early October, 2001, after completing several weeks of calibration and check-out observations. Calibrated lists of objects in ROTSE-IIIa sky patrol data are produced routinely in an automated pipeline, and we are currently automating analysis procedures to compile these lists, eliminate false detections, and automatically identify transient and variable objects. The manual application of these procedures has already led to the detection of a nova that rose over six magnitudes in two days to a maximum detected brightness of m_R~13.9 and then faded two magnitudes in two weeks. We also readily identify variable stars, includings those suspected to be variables from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We report on our system to allow public monitoring of the telescope operational status in real time over the WWW.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures, submitted for publication in the proceedings of ``Gamma-Ray Burst and Afterglow Astronomy 2001: A Workshop Celebrating the First Year of the HETE Mission'

Status of the ROTSE-III telescope network

ROTSE-III is a homogeneous worldwide array of 4 robotic telescopes. They were designed to provide optical observations of γ-ray burst (GRB) afterglows as close as possible to the start of γ-ray emission. ROTSE-III is fulfilling its potential for GRB science, and provides optical observations for a variety of astrophysical sources in the interim between GRB events

The Anomalous Early Afterglow of GRB 050801

The ROTSE-IIIc telescope at the H.E.S.S. site, Namibia, obtained the earliest detection of optical emission from a Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB), beginning only 21.8 s from the onset of Swift GRB 050801. The optical lightcurve does not fade or brighten significantly over the first ~250 s, after which there is an achromatic break and the lightcurve declines in typical power-law fashion. The Swift/XRT also obtained early observations starting at 69 s after the burst onset. The X-ray lightcurve shows the same features as the optical lightcurve. These correlated variations in the early optical and X-ray emission imply a common origin in space and time. This behavior is difficult to reconcile with the standard models of early afterglow emission.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

The Early Optical Afterglow of GRB 030418 and Progenitor Mass Loss

The ROTSE-IIIa telescope and the SSO 40 inch (1.0 m) telescope, both located at Siding Spring Observatory, imaged the early-time afterglow of GRB 030418. In this report, we present observations of the early afterglow, first detected by the ROTSE-IIIa telescope 211 s after the start of the burst and only 76 s after the end of the gamma-ray activity. We detect optical emission that rises for ∼600 s, slowly varies around R = 17.3 mag for ∼1400 s, and then fades as a power law of index α = -1.36. Additionally, the ROTSE-IIIb telescope, located at McDonald Observatory, imaged the early-time afterglow of GRB 030723. The behavior of this light curve was qualitatively similar to that of GRB 030418, but 2 mag dimmer. These two afterglows are dissimilar to other afterglows such as GRB 990123 and GRB 021211. We investigate whether or not the early afterglow can be attributed to a synchrotron break in a cooling synchrotron spectrum as it passes through the optical band, but we find that this model is unable to accurately describe the early light curve. We present a simple model for gamma-ray burst emission emerging from a wind medium surrounding a massive progenitor star. This model provides an effective description of the data and suggests that the rise of the afterglow can be ascribed to extinction in the local circumburst environment. In this interpretation, these events provide further evidence of the connection between gamma-ray bursts and the collapse of massive stars.This work has been supported by NASA grants NAG5- 5281 and F006794, NSF grants AST 01-19685 and 01-05221, the Australian Research Council, the University of New South Wales, and the University of Michigan. Work performed at LANL is supported by NASA SR&T through Department of Energy (DOE) contract W-7405-ENG-36 and through internal LDRD funding

The early optical afterglow of GRB 030418 and progenitor mass loss

The ROTSE-IIIa telescope and the SSO 40 inch (1.0 m) telescope, both located at Siding Spring Observatory, imaged the early-time afterglow of GRB 030418. In this report, we present observations of the early afterglow, first detected by the ROTSE-IIIa telescope 211 s after the start of the burst and only 76 s after the end of the gamma-ray activity. We detect optical emission that rises for ∼600 s, slowly varies around R = 17.3 mag for ∼1400 s, and then fades as a power law of index α = -1.36. Additionally, the ROTSE-IIIb telescope, located at McDonald Observatory, imaged the early-time afterglow of GRB 030723. The behavior of this light curve was qualitatively similar to that of GRB 030418, but 2 mag dimmer. These two afterglows are dissimilar to other afterglows such as GRB 990123 and GRB 021211. We investigate whether or not the early afterglow can be attributed to a synchrotron break in a cooling synchrotron spectrum as it passes through the optical band, but we find that this model is unable to accurately describe the early light curve. We present a simple model for gamma-ray burst emission emerging from a wind medium surrounding a massive progenitor star. This model provides an effective description of the data and suggests that the rise of the afterglow can be ascribed to extinction in the local circumburst environment. In this interpretation, these events provide further evidence of the connection between gamma-ray bursts and the collapse of massive stars

GRB 081008: from burst to afterglow and the transition phase in between

We present a multi-wavelength study of GRB 081008, at redshift 1.967, by Swift, ROTSE-III and GROND. Compared to other Swift GRBs, GRB 081008 has a typical gamma-ray isotropic equivalent energy output (10^53 erg) during the prompt phase, and displayed two temporally separated clusters of pulses. The early X-ray emission seen by the Swift/XRT was dominated by the softening tail of the prompt emission, producing multiple flares during and after the Swift/BAT detections. Optical observations that started shortly after the first active phase of gamma-ray emission showed two consecutive peaks. We interpret the first optical peak as the onset of the afterglow associated with the early burst activities. A second optical peak, coincident with the later gamma-ray pulses, imposes a small modification to the otherwise smooth lightcurve and thus suggests a minimal contribution from a probable internal component. We suggest the early optical variability may be from continuous energy injection into the forward shock front by later shells producing the second epoch of burst activities. These early observations thus provide a potential probe for the transition from prompt to the afterglow phase. The later lightcurve of GRB 081008 displays a smooth steepening in all optical bands and X-ray. The temporal break is consistent with being achromatic at the observed wavelengths. Our broad energy coverage shortly after the break constrains a spectral break within optical. However, the evolution of the break frequency is not observed. We discuss the plausible interpretations of this behavior.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Looking Into the Fireball: ROTSE-III and Swift Observations of Early GRB Afterglows

We report on a complete set of early optical afterglows of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) obtained with the ROTSE-III telescope network from March 2005 through June 2007. This set is comprised of 12 afterglows with early optical and Swift/XRT observations, with a median ROTSE-III response time of 45 s after the start of gamma-ray emission (8 s after the GCN notice time). These afterglows span four orders of magnitude in optical luminosity, and the contemporaneous X-ray detections allow multi-wavelength spectral analysis. Excluding X-ray flares, the broadband synchrotron spectra show that the optical and X-ray emission originate in a common region, consistent with predictions of the external forward shock in the fireball model. However, the fireball model is inadequate to predict the temporal decay indices of the early afterglows, even after accounting for possible long-duration continuous energy injection. We find that the optical afterglow is a clean tracer of the forward shock, and we use the peak time of the forward shock to estimate the initial bulk Lorentz factor of the GRB outflow, and find 100<Gamma_0<1000, consistent with expectations.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Ap